Dr Ben Parris
Professor of Psychology, Bournemouth University
The science
What we know,and what we don't.
Every exercise in BrainGym comes from a task researchers have used for decades. This page shows the research behind each one, how strong that evidence is, and where it runs out.
Built with a team of neuroscientists from multiple UK universities.
How to read this page
Every claim carries one of three labels, so you can see exactly how much weight it holds.
Research-backed
Shown in published, peer-reviewed studies.
Extrapolation
Reasonably follows from the research but has not been proved directly. BrainGym hopes to help contribute to this scientific research.
Design decision
A choice we made so the training works. Not a scientific claim.
Show
01
What we claim
We say
Every exercise is built on a task researchers have studied for decades.
Your scores on those exercises improve with regular practice.
As with any training, showing up often counts for more than one big session.
Combining regular cognitive exercises, the right nutrition and adequate sleep can help your brain health.
We don't say
That BrainGym raises your IQ.
That it prevents dementia, or treats any medical condition.
That getting better at our exercises makes you better at everything else. See section 07
02
Who checks our work
Nothing scientific goes into BrainGym without sign-off from our scientific advisory board. That covers every exercise, every scoring change and every claim on this page.
Professor Claudia von Bastian
Professor of Cognitive Psychology, University of Sheffield
Dr Nabil Hasshim
Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology, University of Salford
03
Why mental fitness, why now
Desk jobs took the physical load out of work, so we built gyms. We are now outsourcing our thinking to AI and short-form media. Researchers have only just started asking what that costs, and we believe people should begin keeping their brains healthy before the research potentially reveals the negative effects.
Research-backed
The more people trust AI, the less critical thinking they report doing.
A survey of 319 knowledge workers by Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon found that higher confidence in AI went with less effort spent thinking things through.1
Research-backed
Heavy short-form video use is linked to weaker focus.
A 2025 review of 71 studies and nearly 100,000 people found that heavier use of short-form video went with poorer attention and self-control, in young people and adults alike. It shows a link, not proof of cause.2
Extrapolation
Leaning on AI may weaken focus and memory in the moment.
In a small MIT study, 54 people writing essays with ChatGPT showed weaker brain connectivity on EEG than people writing unaided, and most struggled to quote a line from the essay they had just written. It hasn't been peer reviewed yet.3
Research-backedThe other side
Everyday technology use is linked to a lower risk of cognitive decline in later life.
A 2025 review pooling studies of more than 400,000 older adults found people who used computers, smartphones and the internet were less likely to develop cognitive impairment. Technology on its own isn't the problem. How we use it matters.4
Our view: use AI sparingly and keep your brain working out. Your 86 billion neurons are capable of extraordinary things.5
04
Focus, Memory, Agility
Research-backed
Psychologists measure three core thinking skills separately.
Holding back distractions, updating what you're holding in mind, and switching between tasks. They're related, but each can be tested on its own.67
Research-backed
Scores on tasks like these improve with regular practice.
Training studies consistently find gains on the trained tasks and on closely related ones.8
Design decision
Focus, Memory and Agility are our names for those three skills.
Which exercise sits under which pillar is our call too, agreed with our scientific advisory board. The tasks themselves are standard.
Focus
Your core. Keeps you steady when everything is pulling you off course.
Memory
Your grip. How much you can hold, and how long you can hold it.
Agility
Your footwork. Changing direction without losing speed.
05
Your brain adapts to training
Train a muscle and it grows. Stop and it shrinks. The brain responds to use in a similar way.
Research-backed
London taxi drivers grow more grey matter as they learn the Knowledge.
Taxi drivers who memorise London's 25,000 streets have more grey matter in the hippocampus, a region key to memory and navigation, and more the longer they've driven. Following trainees over several years showed the growth happened only in those who qualified.1516
Research-backed
Use it or lose it.
People who learned to juggle for three months gained grey matter in areas that track movement. After three months without practice, part of that gain reversed.17
Research-backed
Brain health can be measured and improved at any age.
The Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas followed nearly 4,000 adults aged 19 to 94 for three years. Scores rose for younger and older adults alike, and the most consistent people gained the most. There was no control group, so it shows a strong link rather than proof.18
Research-backed
Twelve weeks of brain training increased blood flow to the brain.
In a Center for BrainHealth trial, 36 adults aged 56 to 75 were randomly assigned to strategy-based brain training or aerobic exercise, three hours a week for 12 weeks. Overall blood flow to the brain rose 7.9% in the brain training group. The exercise group improved its memory instead.19
Research-backed
As brain health improved, the brain's physical structure changed.
Researchers scanned 190 adults aged 20 to 70 up to five times over four years. Rising brain health scores went with measurable changes in the folding of the brain's surface. It shows a link, not proof that training caused it.20
Research-backed
Training works best alongside good food, sleep and exercise.
In a two-year trial of 1,260 older adults, a programme combining diet, exercise, brain training and health checks improved thinking skills compared with standard health advice. Sleep matters too: it's when the brain locks in what you've learned.2122
Extrapolation
Regular mental training may strengthen the brain in a similar way.
These studies trained real-world skills over months. Whether short daily workouts like ours produce the same kind of change hasn't been tested yet. We hope our data can help answer it.
Design decision
Your in-app coach adds nutrition and sleep guidance as you train.
The exercises train your thinking skills. Your coach helps with the rest of the routine around them.
06
How Brain Score works
Building0-19
Developing20-39
Training40-64
Performing65-90
Elite91-100
Research-backed
Little and often beats cramming.
Practice spread across days leads to longer-lasting gains than the same amount done in one go.23
Extrapolation
Every workout ends with a breathing cool-down.
A few minutes of slow, paced breathing helps your body wind down, the same way a cool-down follows a run.24
Design decision
Brain Score is the average of your Focus, Memory and Agility scores, out of 100.
It climbs through five bands, from Building to Elite. Elite is deliberately hard to reach.
Design decision
Your score rewards showing up.
Four training days a week moves you up steadily. One great session on its own moves you a little.
Design decision
Miss days and your score drops a little.
It never falls below the last checkpoint you reached, so a week off never wipes out months of work.
07
Where the research is still being carried out
Research-backed
Whether brain training makes you better at everyday life is still debated.
Large reviews find solid gains on the trained tasks, and weaker evidence that those gains carry over to unrelated skills or to intelligence.258
So we only report what we can measure: how you perform on our exercises, over time. As our own data grows, we'll share what we find on this page, so you are always kept up to date on recent scientific findings and research.
References
- Lee, H.-P. et al. (2025). The impact of generative AI on critical thinking: self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers. Proceedings of CHI 2025, ACM. Read the paper
- Nguyen, L. et al. (2025). Feeds, feelings, and focus: a systematic review and meta-analysis examining the cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use. Psychological Bulletin, 151(9), 1125-1146. doi:10.1037/bul0000498
- Kosmyna, N. et al. (2025). Your brain on ChatGPT: accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing task. MIT Media Lab. Preprint, not yet peer reviewed. arXiv:2506.08872
- Benge, J. F. & Scullin, M. K. (2025). A meta-analysis of technology use and cognitive aging. Nature Human Behaviour, 9(7). doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02159-9
- Azevedo, F. A. C. et al. (2009). Equal numbers of neuronal and nonneuronal cells make the human brain an isometrically scaled-up primate brain. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 513(5), 532-541. doi:10.1002/cne.21974
- Miyake, A. et al. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex frontal lobe tasks. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1), 49-100. doi:10.1006/cogp.1999.0734
- Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135-168. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143750
- Melby-Lervag, M., Redick, T. S. & Hulme, C. (2016). Working memory training does not improve performance on measures of intelligence or other measures of 'far transfer'. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 512-534. doi:10.1177/1745691616635612
- Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18(6), 643-662. doi:10.1037/h0054651
- Reitan, R. M. (1958). Validity of the Trail Making Test as an indicator of organic brain damage. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 8(3), 271-276. doi:10.2466/pms.1958.8.3.271
- Verbruggen, F. & Logan, G. D. (2008). Automatic and controlled response inhibition: associative learning in the go/no-go and stop-signal paradigms. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137(4), 649-672. doi:10.1037/a0013170
- Kirchner, W. K. (1958). Age differences in short-term retention of rapidly changing information. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55(4), 352-358. doi:10.1037/h0043688
- Kessels, R. P. C. et al. (2000). The Corsi block-tapping task: standardization and normative data. Applied Neuropsychology, 7(4), 252-258. doi:10.1207/S15324826AN0704_8
- Monsell, S. (2003). Task switching. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 134-140. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00028-7
- Maguire, E. A. et al. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398-4403. doi:10.1073/pnas.070039597
- Woollett, K. & Maguire, E. A. (2011). Acquiring 'the Knowledge' of London's layout drives structural brain changes. Current Biology, 21(24), 2109-2114. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.018
- Draganski, B. et al. (2004). Neuroplasticity: changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature, 427, 311-312. doi:10.1038/427311a
- Cook, L. G., Spence, J. S. et al. (2026). Measuring and increasing the brain health span across adulthood: a public health imperative. Scientific Reports. Center for BrainHealth, University of Texas at Dallas. doi:10.1038/s41598-026-51403-3
- Chapman, S. B. et al. (2016). Distinct brain and behavioral benefits from cognitive vs. physical training: a randomized trial in aging adults. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, 338. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2016.00338
- Honea, R. A., D'Esposito, M. & Cook, L. G. (2026). Longitudinal surface-based morphometry reveals potential MRI biomarkers correlated with multidimensional brain health measures. Brain Imaging and Behavior. doi:10.1007/s11682-026-01175-1
- Ngandu, T. et al. (2015). A 2 year multidomain intervention of diet, exercise, cognitive training, and vascular risk monitoring versus control to prevent cognitive decline in at-risk elderly people (FINGER): a randomised controlled trial. The Lancet, 385(9984), 2255-2263. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60461-5
- Diekelmann, S. & Born, J. (2010). The memory function of sleep. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 114-126. doi:10.1038/nrn2762
- Cepeda, N. J. et al. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: a review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
- Balban, M. Y. et al. (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 4(1), 100895. doi:10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895
- Simons, D. J. et al. (2016). Do 'brain-training' programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3), 103-186. doi:10.1177/1529100616661983